Underwear Chronicles Eight: Amelia Bloomer

The Past and The Curious: A History Podcast for Kids and Families

The Past and The Curious History Podcast for Kids

Kids & Family

4.5 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 16 June 2022

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Despite being the namesake of an article of clothing that we commonly think of as underwear, Amelia Bloomer did not invent bloomers. To further the cause of Women’s Rights and to fight for the right to vote (in addition to prohibition), Amelia Bloomer ran a newspaper called The Lily.  When one of her friends showed up for a visit in a new outfit one day, history was made. Tired of the restrictive and oppressive clothing women were expected to wear in the 1800s, Amelia fell head over heels for the “tunic and pantalette combo,” as it was known. When she published the instructions to make them in The Lily, her subscriptions went through the roof.   Soon, the knee-length skirt and leg coverings underneath allowed for a new range of motion and freedom for women all over. One of the most remarkable things this allowed women to do was ride bicycles, which Susan B Anthony herself said, did “more to emancipate women than any one thing in the world.” Bloomers didn’t lead directly to the 19th Amendment, but the underwear played a strong supporting role.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everybody, welcome to The Past and the Curious.
0:05.9	My name is Mick Sullivan and I'm glad that you are joining us.
0:10.3	This is episode 8 of The Underwear Chronicles, which is a sub-series of The Past and the Curious.
0:15.9	So these episodes are a little bit shorter, but they are actually a chapter.
0:19.5	Each episode is a chapter from an upcoming book that I will have out very soon, hopefully
0:24.3	at the end of this year, not the beginning of 2023.
0:27.7	And that book is called I See Lincoln's Underpants.
0:31.6	And this episode, this chapter, is about Amelia Blumer.
0:35.4	Now we did an episode that featured Amelia Blumer about two years ago, so some of this
0:40.0	is going to sound familiar, but there are new elements to the story.
0:43.9	It's completely rewritten, and I'm excited to share it with you.
0:47.2	Two quick notes, I use the word eponym, and eponym is something that is named after someone.
0:54.3	So the article of clothing known as bloomers was named after Amelia Blumer.
0:59.2	You'll learn about that in a minute.
1:00.6	The other thing that I say and talk about is suffrage, which is a word for the right to
1:05.8	vote.
1:06.8	Alright, let's get started.
1:09.6	In the 1800s, wearing a dress could be a real drag.
1:14.6	I mean that literally, some of those gargantuan gowns were so gigantic that they often grazed
1:20.2	the ground beneath the feet of any woman wearing one.
1:24.2	You could argue that big bell-shaped dresses were more than just a fashion statement, though.
1:29.1	In a way, women's fashion became a form of substitute street cleaning.
	...

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